A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
